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Ox Tongue, Potted

A preserved dish of boiled pickled ox tongue mixed with butter and spices, then packed in jars and covered with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ox Tongue, Potted

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Remove the skin and hard parts from the boiled pickled tongue.

  2. Weigh the meat, then mince it finely.

Pot and store

  1. Pound the minced meat in a mortar with the butter, mace, cayenne, cloves, and nutmeg.

  2. Mix thoroughly and press into small potting jars.

  3. Cover with clarified butter and keep in a cool place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pickled ox tongue
Provides the main meat, whose savory flavor forms the base of the potted mixture.
Fresh butter
Binds the pounded meat into a smooth paste and adds richness and moisture.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor that complements the meat and butter.
Nutmeg
Contributes a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spiced flavor.
Cloves
Adds a pungent, aromatic warmth to the spiced paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with the butter. The meat must be finely minced and thoroughly pounded so the butter emulsifies evenly into a smooth, spreadable paste. Uneven mixing leaves dry or greasy pockets and an unpleasant texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, pepper, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, clove, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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